


Say It When You’re Ready

by MoreHuman



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25007755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoreHuman/pseuds/MoreHuman
Summary: David has only said “I love you” three times. Now Patrick knows it.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 42
Kudos: 236





	Say It When You’re Ready

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Distractivate for the accidental sorta-almost prompt.

“Yes, we open tomorrow. Lots to do still.”

David isn’t trying to eavesdrop on the phone call, it’s just that the store’s pristine acoustics make it impossible not to listen to Patrick’s voice, no matter where he is. It’s kind of a problem.

“Okay, Mom.” Patrick’s chuckle grows louder as he emerges from the back room. “I’ll send some pictures. I love you.”

Patrick ends the call. David is rearranging the scarf wall with his back turned, so it’s a simple thing to pretend he wasn’t listening.

“You say that a lot,” his mouth goes ahead and blurts, because fuck, when has it ever wanted to do the simple thing?

“I say what a lot?” Patrick asks, then, somehow reading the elaborate series of points and waves David sends in his direction, extrapolates, “I love you?”

“Mmm, you say it every time you call your mom. What’s the story there?”

“The story?” Patrick sounds amused, but by the time he plants himself in David’s eye line, leaning against the shelf next to the scarf wall with his arms crossed, fixing David with that  _ I’m gonna figure you out _ stare, he’s serious. “The story is that I love her.”

David feels a shiver pass through him. Grandma Rose used to say, at moments like this, that someone just walked over his grave, but he doesn’t think so. Not this time. Some other sacred space, maybe.

“Every time you talk to her?”

“Yes, I love her every time I talk to her. That’s kind of how love works?”

“If you say so.”

The scarves don’t need any more arranging, but Patrick doesn’t know that. He couldn’t follow a color story if he plotted it as a bar graph (he tried it once). So David keeps taking scarves down and putting them back up in the same spot, and waits for Patrick to wander away. He doesn’t.

“So what’s the story here?”

David doesn’t think to act like Patrick’s talking about the scarves, which he’ll regret tomorrow.

“Oh, just a very short one,” he says, the poster child of nonchalance. “I’ve only said those words to my parents twice, but the second time they basically bullied it out of me, so it barely counts. Then I said it one other time, at a Mariah Carey concert.”

Patrick is quiet for a long, unbearable moment, and David braces himself for... something. Disbelief? Pity?

“Wow. That’s it?” The words are as expected, but the tone is something else. “Only  _ one time _ during an entire Mariah Carey concert? That’s an impressive amount of restraint.”

“Well.” David sniffs. “Trust me. She really earned it.”

Patrick does wander away then. He brushes past, his hand on David’s arm so briefly that later it’ll feel imagined. But somehow the determination behind Patrick’s next words will keep feeling eternally, impossibly real:

“I bet she did.”


End file.
